Tag: Vicki Pettersson

Well, that’s what it felt like. Poor Sam had to take time off from work, because it was Pain Doc Day. The pain doc­tor is off in the wilds of Cobb Coun­ty, because that’s where we lived when I start­ed see­ing a pain doc­tor, and it’s darn near impos­si­ble to get a ref­er­ence to a new one (much less trust that a new one will, in fact, keep writ­ing pre­scrip­tions for the meds that actu­al­ly work). Then we head­ed to Big Ware­house Store to get the RXs filled, and also hit the bank and the post office because they’re just so much fun! And then it was time to go see the friend­ly ther­a­pist lady.

Hap­pi­ly, we were able to game off and on dur­ing the day, which made the whole busi­ness far more pleas­ant than it would have been oth­er­wise. And we picked up a great big bag of fat-lady clothes from a nice freecy­cler! Some of them are so cool the girl is eying them cov­etous­ly, so I need to be sure they go to my room and don’t wan­der off to hers.

While we were gone, though, a sweet fairy girl washed our quilt and com­forter! Sam put fresh sheets on the bed, so I’ll be crawl­ing into a nice, clean bed next to a fresh­ly-show­ered, cud­dly man soon. That part of the day, I’m look­ing for­ward to!Read more

Sam and I had a very nice date night while Katie was out with her beau. He had start­ed mak­ing chili last night, fin­ished it tonight, and added corn muffins. I’m not a big fan of chili (I won’t eat it if Sam didn’t make it), but it was a very sat­is­fy­ing meal.

The girl is doing very well in the online course she’s tak­ing, and I’m hap­py to say that my semes­ter is going well, too. It’s hard to believe that my baby will like­ly start col­lege cours­es this sum­mer or fall!Read more

For one thing, I have sev­er­al draft posts sit­ting around here, but I haven’t been able to stay focused long enough to fin­ish any of them.

Sam caught some kind of flu-like crud, which Katie and I both caught, of course. Now he seems to be get­ting it again, which is gross­ly unfair. Poor bear!

The girl is final­ly feel­ing a wee bit bet­ter, but she still had a fever last night. We aren’t with my fam­i­ly today, because we’re too wor­ried about get­ting the twins sick. They’re still so tiny!

I should be stitch­ing. I want to be stitch­ing. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it seems that I need to add a good mag­ni­fier to my Ott Lite, and may­be get my eyes checked/​glasses changed, too. My eyes go all wog­gly every time I try to focus on the linen now. Very annoy­ing!

One of the few things I have fin­ished late­ly is lots of library-enabled read­ing. That has includ­ed Bone of Con­tention and Chains of Fol­ly by Rober­ta Gel­lis, the third and fourth books in her Magde­lene la BÃ¢tarde series. Magde­lene is a whoremistress in medieval Eng­land whose House is reg­is­tered on the tax rolls an Embroi­dery shop. She and her wom­en do, in fact, pro­duce and sell fine needle­work, but that isn’t their main source of income.

This is one of two series I learned about when I was read­ing rec.crafts.textiles.needlework. I’m glad, as would have been very unlike­ly to run across them with­out the rec­om­men­da­tion.

I have some­thing to con­fess: I am guilty of judg­ing some books by their cov­ers. And if I’d seen Chains of Fol­ly first, with­out already know­ing that Gel­lis is a good author and I enjoy this par­tic­u­lar series, I wouldn’t have had any rea­son to pick it up for a look. I might have tak­en it for a text­book edi­tion of some­thing fre­quent­ly assigned to lit­er­a­ture class­es (read: bor­ing!), but not the lat­est vol­ume in a good series by an estab­lished, award-win­ning author. Tor/​Forge pub­lished the first three, and they were of much high­er qual­i­ty than what Five Star Books has put out.

That Tor/​Forge didn’t buy book four tells me that Gel­lis prob­a­bly had a con­tract for a tril­o­gy, but it didn’t sell as well as the pub­lish­er hoped, so they weren’t inter­est­ed in more of that tale. Still, I loved the first two books, and was def­i­nite­ly pay­ing atten­tion to see if there was a third, but didn’t hear that it was actu­al­ly out until recent­ly. It was pub­lished in 2002! I know that Gel­lis is one of the authors I put in my Ama­zon “Eyes” list (which seems to have stopped work­ing at some point), and I didn’t hear a thing. I have to won­der if the pub­lish­er just didn’t both­er to mar­ket the book at all.

The­se days, Gel­lis is bet­ter known for co-author­ing fan­ta­sy books with Mer­cedes Lack­ey. That’s too bad, as her his­tor­i­cal fic­tion is rich­ly detailed and authen­tic. Lackey’s name has been used to sell so much crap that I just don’t both­er any more, even if I like what the co-author has done on her own. Any­thing Lack­ey has touched in the last decade, at least, is for­mu­laic and trite. There were some good points in some of her ear­lier books, which I might even be able to re-read some day — but after the first few trilo­gies they were just too pre­dictable.

I also read two books by Vicki Pet­tersson this week, the lat­est book in Tanya Huff’s Con­fed­er­a­tion series, and Her Roy­al Spy­ness by Rhys Bowen. That last jumped off the new book shelves at me because of the cute name and nice cov­er. I don’t know that I’ll read any­thing else by Bowen, but it was an inter­est­ing depar­ture for me.

I’ve got sev­er­al books of poet­ry and some non-fic­tion in the mix, as well. I tend to read those in lit­tle nib­bles, as I like to think about the poems rather than rat­tle on through them. I’ll share some of that soon.